Posts Tagged 'zombies'

Ohio State’s Urban Gaming Club is just one example of all the zany and niche student groups you can find on a huge campus like Ohio State. Currently the UGC is running their fall game of “Infection”, with over 200 students playing a week-long, campus wide game of tag. Except with nerf guns. And one team is zombies. Fast zombies that will chase you in between your classes.

Of course there are plenty of precautions taken to ensure everyone’s safety during the game (players and onlookers alike). The club’s golden rule is this – the “No D-Bag” rule. While there are club officers who overlook play, the game is largely self-regulated with players using the honor code to make sure the game is fun and fair for everyone. And when someone breaks a rule, all the players can call them out for being a “d-bag” and the transgression can be recorded online at the UGC’s Infection website.

Humans gather to survive their final mission - Courtesy of ohiostateugc.com

The game’s stats can be tracked online as well. The most recent “casualties” are up for everyone to see, so players can see the human numbers quickly dwindling as the week goes on. Aside from the skirmishes that happen on campus between classes (sometimes you might see some poor sap with a nerf gun being chased by four “zombies” during your lunch break), the game features night missions with specific objectives aimed at larger-scale engagements. Last year the game ended with a huge night mission extraction, where the small amount of remaining human players had to survive on campus while the zombies searched for them. At the end of the night they all gathered around Thompson library to be extracted by a giant cardboard tank (driven Flintstones style) and make it off campus alive and well. It was really a blast to watch.

UGC runs other games through the year, including capture-the-flag matches and a week game of Assassins, which is like Infection with less zombies and more skullduggery. It can be a really entertaining group to be a part of.

Some of us imagine what life might ever be like if there were a zombie apocalypse. UGC’s Infection might be the closest you can comfortably get to a similar situation. Get on campus, grab a few like-minded friends and sign-up for some of the UGC games. I can only imagine the kind of camaraderie born from a week-long nerf gun survival fest. You never know how much you valued your friends until you’ve had to leave them behind for the horde.